Friday, August 10, 2012

From worstpreviews, In the 1993 movie "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," Darlene Cates played Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio's morbidly obese mother Bonnie, who hasn't left the house in years while dealing with depression following her husband's suicide.

Now, twenty years later, 64-year-old Cates has gone from 575 lbs to 331 (pictured, before/after) and is ready to get back to acting. "I can do moms real well," she said. "I'm not opposed to doing science fiction or comedy, but there has to be respect. I refuse to be the joke, the fat woman joke, in any movie. I've turned down roles."

Cates is interested in taking one or two roles. But first, she'll have to recover from a series of health scares and four surgeries that kept her in hospitals for almost 11 months, until last November. For now, she remains housebound, but has plans to lose another 100 lbs.

1 comment:

I don't want to be the one to tell the woman what she can or can't do, and what I'm about to say is hardly news, but acting is one profession where they're allowed to tell you that what you look like does matter.

Julie and I were just watching an episode of Breaking Bad that spent a few minutes tracking the life of a crack whore, and Julie mentioned that must be a tough mark for an actress, having the perfect face for a crack whore. Them's the breaks.